(A) Irving's claim in Hitler's War (1977)

1.In Hitler's War (1977), Irving argues that Hitler disapproved of the killings of Jews in the East. He claims that Hitler even explicitly ordered a stop to the extermination of Jews in November 1941 - as Trevor-Roper noted, blatantly contradicting his own claim that Hitler was ignorant about what was happening to Jews in Eastern Europe. In the most in-depth discussion of this issue, Irving states that on 30 November 1941 Himmler

was summoned to the Wolf's Lair for a secret conference with Hitler, at which the fate of Berlin's Jews was clearly raised. At 1:30 P.M. Himmler was obliged to telephone from Hitler's bunker to Heydrich the explicit order that Jews were not to be liquidated; and the next day Himmler telephoned SS General Oswald Pohl, overall chief of the concentration camp system, with the order: "Jews are to stay were they are".76

2.Irving's evidence for his far-reaching claims relies purely on one entry in Himmler's phone log. Apparently, Himmler had a phone conversation from Hitler's bunker with Heydrich in Prague on 30 November 1941 at 1:30 pm, which Himmler summarised as follows:

3. Irving interprets this in the 1977 edition of his book as meaning that Hitler told Himmler to tell Heydrich over the phone not to kill any Jews at all, ever. In the introduction to Hitler's War, Irving states that this is 'incontrovertible evidence' that 'Hitler ordered on November 30, 1941, that there was to be "no liquidation" of the Jews (without much difficulty, I found in Himmler's private files his own handwritten note on this)'.78 Later on in the text, Irving several times refers to Hitler's 'November 1941 order forbidding the liquidation of the Jews'. The document Jackel, Hitler und der Mord an den europaischer Juden is mentioned no fewer than six times in the book, and forms the object of its only illustration. In June 1977 he also said: 'We want to know why other historians have not mentioned ever the one document that exists of Adolf Hitler saying "no liquidation of even a tiny train-load of Jews".'